The parish council fixed asset register: a template that survives the AGAR

The fixed asset register is usually the least-loved document a parish council holds. It gets built once, often years ago, and then inherited by each new clerk with varying degrees of confidence about what is actually on it. It only demands attention when Box 9 of the AGAR moves and nobody can say why — at which point it demands attention urgently.

A good register is not complicated. It is a single list, maintained to a few consistent rules, reviewed once a year. Here is what it needs to contain and the conventions that keep it defensible.

The columns

A register that answers every question the external auditor, the insurer and an incoming clerk will ever ask needs, for each asset:

• Reference — a simple unique number, so minutes and invoices can point at a specific line.
• Description — enough to identify the asset unambiguously: "Wicksteed junior swing set, Recreation Ground" rather than "play equipment".
• Location — where it is or, for land and buildings, the address and any Land Registry title number.
• Date of acquisition — or the best evidenced estimate for legacy assets.
• Cost at acquisition — the figure that drives Box 9 (more on this below).
• Funding source — precept, grant, CIL, section 106, donation. Useful when a funder's conditions attach to the asset.
• Insured value — kept as a separate column, never merged with cost.
• Disposal date and proceeds — completed when the asset goes, with the line retained rather than deleted.
• Notes — condition, inspection regime, custodian, anything a successor would need.

The historic cost rule

For the AGAR, smaller authorities record assets at their value on acquisition — what the council paid — and that figure does not change over the asset's life. No depreciation, no revaluation, no annual uplift for inflation. Once an asset is on the register at cost, it stays at that figure until disposal.

This is the single most common source of confusion, because it means the register is meant to diverge from two other numbers councils hold: the insured value (which should track replacement cost and rise over time) and any market value (which matters only if the council is selling). Keeping "cost for Box 9" and "insured value" in separate columns, and reporting only the first in the AGAR, resolves most of the muddle. A register whose Box 9 total quietly absorbed an insurance revaluation somewhere in its history is the classic cause of an unexplainable variance.

Two accepted conventions for awkward legacy items: an asset acquired for nothing — a donated bench, a transferred war memorial — is normally carried at a nominal £1 unless a proxy cost is evidenced. And where a genuinely ancient asset has no traceable cost, a reasonable, documented estimate made once and then left alone is far better than a figure that changes with each clerk.

What belongs on the register

Include what the council owns: land (allotments, greens, cemeteries, recreation grounds), buildings (village hall if council-owned, pavilions, bus shelters), play and gym equipment, street furniture (benches, bins, noticeboards, planters), war memorials where the council is responsible, office and IT equipment, tools and machinery, and civic regalia.

Leave off what the council does not own — assets it merely maintains by agreement, hired equipment, the village hall run by a separate charity — and revenue items: repairs, maintenance and like-for-like part replacement are not additions. Councils commonly set a de minimis (often somewhere between £100 and £500, a matter for the council to decide and minute) below which purchases are expensed rather than listed, so the register is not cluttered with staplers.

Where the council is sole trustee of a charity that holds property, keep those assets clearly separated — the AGAR asks about trusteeship, and mixing trust assets into the council's own register causes exactly the kind of question you do not want.

The annual routine

Once a year, before the AGAR is prepared: add the year's acquisitions at cost from the invoices, record any disposals, physically verify a sample (or the lot — most registers are short), check the total agrees to Box 9, and take the register to full council for review and approval, minuted. That last step matters: an approved register is evidence; a spreadsheet on the clerk's laptop is an opinion.

Done in that order, the Box 9 line of the variance explanations writes itself: additions of £X, disposals of £Y, movement explained.

Rebuilding a register that has drifted

If the register no longer agrees to Box 9, or nobody trusts what is on it, the rebuild sequence is: start from the physical assets (walk the parish — it is quicker than it sounds), match each to purchase evidence in the cashbook, minutes and old invoices, apply the historic cost rule and the £1 convention where evidence has gone, reconcile the resulting total to the last reliable Box 9 figure, and document every estimate made. The output is a register you can defend, plus a one-paragraph note explaining any restatement — which is precisely what the external auditor wants to see when a Box 9 figure is corrected.

Conventions summarised here follow the current Practitioners' Guide; check the current year's edition, as guidance is reviewed annually.